The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to piping integrity inspection, and, more specifically, to determining interaction of metal loss clusters.
Typically, pipelines exist to transport a wide variety of products, such as crude or refined petroleum, natural gas, water, or any other suitable liquid or gas. In order to ensure that pipelines continue running properly, operators perform various testing and maintenance on the pipelines, such as inspecting pipelines for features. A feature may be metal losses, dents, deformations, or other defects in the pipe. Operators can locate features of the pipeline in a variety of ways.
Direct measurements can be performed (e.g., pipeline excavation), which can be costly, time consuming, or impractical. Alternatively and/or additionally, in-line inspection may be used by operators to inspect pipelines. Tools can be sent through the pipeline to provide information about features of the pipeline. Surface pitting, corrosion, cracks, or other features are often detected by the tool to identify sections that may have lower burst pressures (i.e. the pressure at which the pipe may rupture). A section with a lower burst pressure (i.e. bursts at a lower pressure) may have a more severe feature or damage. However, sometimes in-line inspection does not provide accurate information about the pipeline. Accordingly, a need exists to improve in-line inspection of pipelines.